Global status quo and trends of research on urinary incontinence: a bibliometric and visualized study

Urinary incontinence (UI) is highly prevalent and poses a considerable social and economic burden on both victims and the society at large. This study reviewed the UI-related literature to present the current status and predict future trends of UI researh.

Studies related to UI published between 2012 and 2022 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. The bibliometric analysis and visualized study were performed by using VOSviewer.

A total of 3092 publications were retrieved for further analysis. The United States ranked the first in terms of the total number of publications, citations, the H-index of publications. The institutions with the most cited publications was the N8 Research Partnership. Neurourology and Urodynamics published most papers, was cited most frequently, and scored the highest H-index. The author with the most citations, and the greatest average citations per article was Nitti VW. The author with the highest H-index was Herschorn S. Articles were divided into five main clusters based on keyword analysis: epidemiological studies, diagnosis studies, therapy studies, female urinary incontinence studies, and male urinary incontinence studies. UI-related epidemiology, therapies and male UI will continue to be the hot topics.

This study indicated that the UI research is more intensive in Europe and North America, Neurourology and Urodynamics was the most influencial journal in the field. Moreover, epidemiology, therapy and male urinary incontinence will continue to be hot topics. Our study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the status quo and provides clues to future research directions of UI.